“Captain Marvel” Has $455M Global Debut

Attempts to sink the launch of Marvel Studios’ “Captain Marvel” appeared to have had no impact – the film beat expectations to deliver a massive box office weekend.

The film had become something of a lightning rod for online vitriol following some out of context quotes by star Brie Larson about wanting more diversity amongst film critics, said quotes fuelled the flames of a “Captain Marvel has an anti-white male agenda” screed flooding message boards and preview/review sites.

It got bad enough that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” filmmaker Rian Johnson joked that attempts by ‘review bombers’ to drop the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score could well be considered the new “Certified Fresh”.

When actual critics reviews came out they were pretty damn good, not great but solid enough and now the film’s box-office numbers are in with the movie pulling in an estimated $153 million domestically, a number that could rise to $157 million after official stats are released.

That’s the seventh best debut for a Marvel Studios film, and the third for a March release. On top of that, the film generated a further $302 million overseas including a strong $89.3 million from China. Its overall global haul of $455 worldwide is the second best superhero debut of all time (behind only “Avengers: Infinity War” with $630 million), the sixth highest opening weekend of all time and the biggest worldwide box office debut record for a female-led film. It almost certainly guarantees the film will break the $1 billion mark.

With no other wide releases in the United States, understandably the rest of the box-office dropped by around 50% aside from doco “Apollo 11” which held strong with only a 19% fall. In limited release, the Julianne Moore-led “Gloria Bell’ opened on five screens to a per-theater-average of $30,955.

As for the online backlash? As a recent article by AV Club sums up the problem and paints the fact this sort of thing is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Also “Fantastic Four” reboot director Josh Trank had the best response someone who said this morning that “No superhero movie fails” to which he replied: “Hold my beer.”